Share via

One of Scotland’s leading historians has criticised the National Theatre of
Scotland’s production of Caledonia as presenting an inaccurate
and “stereotypical” version of a key episode in Scotland’s history.

Professor Tom Devine said that to suggest the disastrous Darien expedition of
1695 was a “simple national folly,” as the play had done, was completely
wrong.

“My concern was that it presented an old stereotypical view of an old, sinking
nation,’ he said. “My whole trajectory of looking at late 17th-century
Scotland is at right angles to that.”

Fellow historian Professor Cairns Craig said the production at the Edinburgh
International Festival